PPC – or Pay Per Click – advertising has exploded in popularity over the last few years, mainly due to its ability to thrust brands and individuals to the top of Google’s rankings in seemingly no time at all. But before jumping at the opportunity to pay your way to the top, it’s important to note that PPC advertising doesn’t always have a place in your digital marketing strategy. So ask yourself the following questions first, and if you struggle to answer, it may be best to think about alternatives instead.
1. Is the Cost Per Click Within Your Budget?
It’s in the name really: Pay Per Click means you’re going to have to fork out for those clicks through to your website/landing page – and the reality is that they may be more expensive than you can afford. To be completely sure, it’s important to do some research and decide upon an ideal budget through a testing campaign first. Creating an estimate cost per click versus how much you’d be willing to spend from your marketing budget will allow you to weigh up whether PPC advertising can be done within your price range. It’s also important to note that cost per click rates have soared in recent months, thanks to internet users shifting more towards mobile usage – so if you have a user-base mainly present on mobile, you may need a re-think for a cheaper campaign.
2. Is it Relevant for Your Audience and Your Business?
As part of your initial research, take some time to think about your target audience, and ask yourself if PPC is really the best way to reach them. The crux of PPC is that the target demographic which you really want to attract needs to be active online and using specific search terms that are relevant to your business - if they’re not, then it no longer becomes a means of marketing that’s going to work for you, and you’ll instead be left disappointed.
3. Have You Done Ample Keyword Research?
Keywords are the backbone of many digital marketing techniques, and can help Google to recognise that your website is exactly what users are looking for. Carrying out extensive research to determine the most appropriate keywords for your industry, business and customers will help your PPC campaign to be successful. Without this research, your campaign could find itself on the wrong end of Google’s Quality Score.
4. What’s the Quality Score?
Being relevant is a key aspect of a successful PPC campaign, and Google rewards relevancy with better results – whereas irrelevant content will see you penalised harshly. The Quality Score is Google’s own rating of your keywords and PPC ads, checking for quality and relevance. The score is used to calculate how much you pay per click, and is multiplied by your maximum bid in order to determine how your ad ranks in the ad auction process. Irrelevant content or misleading keywords won’t get you very far, and can result in overspending and poor results. Having a good quality score has become even more essential now that Google has removed all right hand side adverts from its search results.
5. Are You Able to Create an Optimised Landing Page?
A landing page is prime real estate for generating conversions from users clicking on your ads, and if you’re using one, it pays to make sure its optimised and ready before the campaign begins. Whereas landing pages can result in higher conversion rates and a lower cost-per-click, you only get the benefits if the page’s content is deemed by Google to have a closely coupled relationship with the advert. By making sure they’re both relevant with one another, you can cut the bounce rate (how quickly someone leaves the page) and increase Google’s Quality Score and Ad Rank. Without an optimised landing page, however, you’re likely to find a successful PPC campaign challenging.
What to Do if PPC isn’t Right for You?
As we’ve talked about recently, paid social media ads are starting to take PPC’s place as the go-to paid digital marketing method. If after reading this you’re not sure that PPC is for you after all, why not embrace social media advertising instead? Not only is it built for beginners, but social media advertising doesn’t suffer from the limitations imposed by Google, and is a relatively straightforward process! Head on over to our blog to find out more.
At the Christian Michaels Agency, we love PPC advertising. As a full-service digital agency in Manchester, we have the expertise, skills and resources to pull off the successful PPC advertising campaigns you’re looking for. To find out more about our process and how we can help you, get in touch to arrange your free consultation and let’s talk PPC!